The Toxic Viewer
The clip was sitting in a video site's trending feed: a pretty woman dancing her heart out, stomach and thighs bare.
If that had been all, I wouldn't have stared like a man whose soul had stepped out of his body.
"She's gorgeous."
A small face. Pale skin. Maybe it was the army in me, but my eyes stuck even harder. She was already in nothing but short shorts and a bra top, bare skin everywhere, and the way she tugged those shorts down a fraction while she danced — flashing the line of her hips — made it obvious why the video had been shoved into trending.
"Insane……."
One look at the comments told me everyone else was thinking the same thing. The video info had a link to a site where she was streaming. Curiosity won. I clicked.
She happened to be live. The streamer's name was Yeonju.
"Whoa."
The top, cleavage on full display, was even more provocative than what I'd seen on the video site. About four thousand people were watching. I couldn't hold it in.
Twenty-three years old, blood running hot. Two years of holding it in was plenty. In the army, the only women I'd seen were girl groups on the TV in the barracks. And here was a woman who didn't lose to any of them — prettier, if anything — and I could actually talk to her.
Yes. Of course! No, not at all. Oh, come on. You too, oppa.
She even chatted with viewers like they were close, dropping oppa without a second thought. I wanted in on that conversation.
I wanted her to say my name, so I'd gone out of my way to sign up and set my nickname to Kim Siwoo. Yeonju didn't read my chat.
"……."
It wasn't only mine. Of all the messages pouring in, only a handful ever got an answer from her.
"Aww, Guardian oppa. Thanks~."
"Oppa! What was that!"
Donate, and a separate alert popped up — and Yeonju talked to you. The little dance she did right after melted the sulk right out of me.
"Whoa. Fuck."
I wanted to eat a single meal with a woman that pretty. I was off in some happy little fantasy when a chat from someone in the same boat as me caught my eye.
So this was what it felt like, watching from the outside — finally seeing why my chats never once caught Yeonju's eye.
"……."
Some bastard had just upended a red pill straight into my mouth. Fair, though. To her this was a job, not volunteer work. Of course she had to treat the people throwing money better.
"Ha."
Life really is unfair.
The thought had barely landed when I realized something was off.
"Wait."
I'd only dabbled in internet broadcasts as a kid and was seeing one again after years, so for a second I'd forgotten. I was rich now. I tapped donate and saw that Windy Pay was a payment option. Which meant unlimited donations.
There was a nasty little feature, too. You didn't even have to preload a balance — every donation pulled straight from the account, the way a credit card loosens your grip. A vicious system, built to kill self-control. For me, it was just convenient.
I linked it, held off on donating, and tried the chat.
The pile-on was instant — bad enough that a manager issued a separate warning. I knew I was being a nuisance. I was curious anyway.
"Oh my! Kim Siwoo! Thank you! You must be new. You can't spam in our room."
The answer came right away. It wasn't so much infuriating as funny. I smiled.
"It's a room rule. I can't help it."
I could see Yeonju's expression stiffen, just a little.
The chat wasn't taking it well either. Even a rough look at the screen told me Yeonju pulled in plenty of money, so not wrecking the broadcast probably mattered more to her than a hundred thousand won. I'd already dropped that amount several times and still couldn't crack the daily donation top ten.
I could feel it. I was standing on the last line. One more bit of aggro and I might actually get banned. I still couldn't stop.
How do I put it? The attention-seeker living in me wouldn't sit still, and a bigger part of me figured I'd get away with it anyway. A rotten thought. But the line I'd heard most in the army was that money makes anything possible, and I wanted to test it once.
"Huh?"
"Siwoo!!!!!!!"
Watching Yeonju bolt up out of her seat, a fun idea occurred to me.
And just like that, I shut the stream off.
"……Am I an attention seeker?"
On the streaming site's idle screen, Yeonju's viewer count had already climbed to eight thousand. Attention, in front of that many people. Had I been an attention seeker all along? It didn't feel bad. And Yeonju — indifferent a moment ago, her eyes slowly turning anxious — that landed on me as a strange kind of pleasure.
How should I even put it? It was close to the look on that hotel employee's face, the one they tried to hide and couldn't, when I asked for the royal suite still wearing my army uniform — and the way that look changed again the moment a single night became a month paid in full.
I understood it for certain.
"I'm an attention seeker."
And an attention seeker with money is allowed to live like one. In that sense, a streaming site was a place built for me. Too lazy to go out and meet anyone, and here I could satisfy an entire social life with nothing but a few clicks of my fingers.
"What should I eat today?"
At the restaurant on the 120th floor, I put dinner away: steak seared by a six-star chef, warm white rice, and a homey soybean-paste stew.
Yeonju's broadcast started at 8 p.m. From the evening slot straight through to three or four in the morning — long, for a female streamer. She was famous for her dancing, but she was just as good at talking to viewers, and the people who watched said that was the real reason they stayed.
My own day had shifted a little to match her hours. Most of the time I woke up, watched a movie or a drama, ordered room service, and sometimes went out to a theater. Around eight I'd lie on the bed and turn the TV to the streaming site. I'd leave Yeonju's broadcast on, kill time in the community forums, and watch when she danced. Textbook unemployed bum with nothing to do — and living felt good. Whenever I got a little bored, I flicked a donation her way.
"Siwoo! You're here! Oh, no, don't be like that. You can chat. I'll make a special exception for you — even if you spam, I won't kick you."
The bright welcome on her face felt good.
The chat's reaction was delicious, too. They were cursing me out, but I had room to spare, so even chats like that were cute. And Yeonju was on my side.
"Hey, hey. Don't insult Siwoo. Manager, give those people one warning each. I will not tolerate anyone badmouthing the people who donate!"
Isn't this what a man's power looks like?
In the days since I'd dropped more than a hundred million won, I hadn't once donated over a hundred thousand.
Push and pull. Give and give and nothing else, and they'd treat me like a sucker.
"……Am I a sucker even now?"
It didn't so much as scratch the account, but from anyone else's seat, chatting while tossing out a hundred thousand won a pop would obviously look like sucker behavior. When I'd first walked into Yeonju's room and stared at the donation rankings, I'd wondered the same thing. What kind of suckers were those people? I'd fire one off whenever the interest in me started to cool. Just enough.
A few more days passed like that.
"Everyone, I'm opening the roulette today for the first time in a while."
"Two hours only, starting at nine! First prize is one meal date. There are four-cut photo strips and all sorts of other things, so please spin a lot~."
"What's a roulette?"
Yeonju had hooked me with a curious little piece of content. I had no choice but to spend.
"Oh. Siwoo!"
Until nine, Yeonju patiently explained what the roulette was. There was no way I could fail to understand. The chat was full of people falling over themselves to explain it, too.
It looked fun.